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Spot: Huntington Beach, CA
33° 39.33828' N, 118° 0.20525'W
Surf City, for better or worse. Huntington Beach has been the scene of a lot of surf history going back to 1907 when George Freeth came over from Hawaii to put on a surfing demonstration to encourage the use of the Pacific Electric Railway-the Red Cars established by Henry Huntington, which ran from downtown LA to Newport Beach by 1910.
Duke Kahanamoku and friends had a sesh less than a decade later but the surf scene didn’t really get jumping until 1956 when Gordie Duane established his surf shop there, and the West Coast Championships began three years later. In 1963, Jan and Dean had a #1 hit with the song Surf City, which was undisputedly HB until Santa Cruz challenged for the dubious title in the 90s.
The West Coast Surfing Championships became the United States Surfing Championships in 1964 and through the 70s, 80s and 90s, Huntington became a regular competition arena for the Katin, various amateur organizations and the Op Pro – an event made famous by the riot in 1986 (see population density) and many epic clashes through the years – Curren vs. Occy, Machado vs. Slater, Sunny Garcia and Rochelle Ballard vs. The Pilings.
Huntington Beach is home to the Haley Brothers, Jackie Baxter, Herbie Fletcher, David Nuuhiwa, Bud Llamas, Kim Hamrock, about a million other surfers, the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame and the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum.
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Huntington Beach, just what does Surf City have to offer? It was two girls for every boy back then, but what now?
Huntington Beach has changed profoundly since Jan and Dean sang about it in 196?, when HB was a funky, quiet little surf town of 11,000 people. Forty years later, the population of Huntington Beach has increased by 20 times,
There are a lot of people crammed into Huntington Beach. The population density as of 2000 was 7,184 people per square mile, and that density sometimes bleeds out of the shady turf into the sunny surf.
Huntington Beach is a suburban jungle built on oilfields built on a swamp, and the ton retains all of those flavors. While the land is flat as Texas, the beaches face the points of the compass from northwest to south and that makes Huntington one of the most consistent surf beaches in the state. There always seems to be some kind of swell hitting there and surf conditions depend on sandbars, currents, wind, tides.
To Forrest Gump it: HB is like a box of chocolates….
The Good
Consistent, accessible, reliable and enough space for the surfer to find a peak and be alone with the surf and his thoughts. Also a zillion surf shops by land, places to eat, people watching, sunshine, etc. Change is a constant with Huntington Beach surf conditions. The beach is wide open to swell but it’s also wide open to wind. And while those winds are onshore a lot more than they are offshore, when the Santa Ana winds blow down from the mountains and meet a swell, Huntington Beach turns into a paradise of pitching A frames from river to river.
The Bad
To some, Huntington Beach is a big slice of OC, SoCal surf city paradise – two girls for every boy. To others it’s a an overcrowded, overdeveloped, overrated, vulgar American shithole – the Wal Mart of surf spots. Two good waves for every session.
There is an aura of “unclean” around Huntington which has to do with all the development, on top of the oilfields on top of the swamp, with a one mile stretch of dog-friendly beach along five miles of people-friendly beach that is bordered on both ends by polluted rivers.
Huntington Beach is still an operating oilfield and with the price of oil near $100 a barrel, the oilfield gets active. The oil around Huntington Beach has an unusually high mercury content, which means the ground and the groundwater seeping down to the ocean is contaminated. Dog Beach is strewn with leftovers and on a hot day, the beach is chockablock with tens of thousands of people with all their refuse and flotsam and jetsam.
Huntington Beach is bordered by the San Gabriel River to the north and the Santa Ana River to the south, both of which are extremely tainted by stormwater runoff and treated sewage.
So even when the surf is clean around HB, it really isn’t. And that has inspired a kind of Johnny Cochran-ish code which goes:
48 hours after a rain, you must refrain.
When the surf line is brown, stand down.
If the water’s colored like piss, give it a miss.
Turds in the impact zone, stay at home.
Toxic barrels on the strand, stay on land.
The Strange
Ron Romanosky has lived within 20 miles of the Santa Ana River Jetties all his life and he has spent most of his life avoiding the place: “ In the early 70's I saw a perch swimming on its side on the surface,” Romanosky said. “Upon closer inspection I noticed it had an abnormal (and large) growth on its mouth. I like the shape of the waves, but common sense says stay out. In the 70s my friend Kris Klinke had some weird throat blocking growth occur a day or two after a go-out there. Antibiotics saved him. For two weeks he could take nothing but liquids for food. He lost over 20 pounds. My other friend Mark Crutchfield died of a heart attack caused by flesh eating bacteria in a Seattle hospital while on a business trip. This was two days after his last go-out at River Jetty, when a big piece of wood cut his leg when he was getting out.”
Former Surfer Magazine warehouse guy Tom Southern has a pretty good horror story about the Santa Ana River Jetties: “About 1990 or so, not a great winter by any stretch, but not terrible, I was driving from DP to LB daily for the 9to5. I wasn't getting much water time, and when a decent swell followed a front through and the wind looked to be good, I figured to score before work one winter morning. I arranged to meet a friend and dawn patrol somewhere between Newport and HB pier. Ended up at RJs because the swell, wind, and tides conspired to lure us to the prettiest waves we had seen.
At that time I wore glasses and always surfed with contacts. Some people surf with glasses, but I just frickin can't. And some people surf without any visual correction, but I've had to dodge Jeff Girard at Creek and I know how hard it can be.
So, we suit up and climb down the rocks and wade the shallows as beautiful tapered barrels peel across the bar, so jazzed, like we've stumble onto our own little secret spot. I think there were only a couple of other guys out.
I push through a couple of waves and paddle out, realizing that the water, although not the chocolate milk variety, had some fizzy, opaque and chemical-smelly element to it. Within minutes, my eyes become irritated and my vision is blurring. At first I think it's just early hour dawn patrol fatigue, but it keeps getting worse. Within 5 minutes, I have sharp pains in my eyes and can't see straight. There was something wrong with those contacts.
I prone in and get out on the sand and start feeling around on my eyeballs. I'm horrified to find both lenses krinkled up and melted TO MY EYEBALLS! They're stuck in there like little bits of Saran wrap on a microwave burrito! My friend comes to see what's up and I have to have him literally tweezer the things off my eyes. They were just completely melted and destroyed and had to be pulled slowly out of each eye. And I swear my wetsuit was never right after that morning. So, yeah River Jetties sucks. Never been back since.
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